Chinese Internet giant Alibaba took another step closer to its highly-anticipated IPO this morning, by filing amended registration documents with the SEC.
Still no information on price expectations or on which exchange it will list, but Alibaba did provide several new pieces of information
• Alibaba reports $910 million in net income on around $1.9 billion in revenue for Q1 2014. For the year ending March 31, Alibaba’s net income rose a whopping 170%, while revenue increased by 52%.
• Alibaba’s original IPO filing only listed four directors (all insiders), but the new filing lists a 9-person board (current director Jacqueline Reses, Yahoo’s head of M&A, will resign just prior to the IPO). This includes six new appointees, four of whom are independent: Chee Hwa Tung, Walter Teh Ming Kwak, Michael Evans and Jerry Yang. Alibaba also said that shareholders Softbank and Yahoo (YHOO) had agreed to vote their shares in favor of the new directors.
• The overall partnership structure will have 27 members, 22 of whom are part of company management.
Expectations are that Alibaba will price its IPO later this summer. The company had listed $1 billion on its original filing, but that was believed to be a placeholder for a much larger intended raise.
